The Hindu Business Line : IPL impact: Zee unscathed; Star and Sony feel the pinch

Viewership trends
Zee TV’s general entertainment channel has been able to grow its GRPs.
Star Plus GRPs have seen a drop in growth rates.
Sony has been able to retain audiences within the network, but its general entertainment channel has taken a hit.

Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai, April 23 Now that the Indian Premier League (IPL) is in full swing, are prime-time soaps losing viewership? The IPL so far has garnered the highest number of eyeballs but Mr Subhash Chandra-owned Zee TV claims that its general entertainment channel (GEC) has been able to grow its gross rating points (GRP) over the weekend. Citing data from aMap, the channel says its daily GRPs grew from 25.8 (the previous Friday) to 29.7 last Friday, when the first IPL match was played at Bangalore. The next match on Saturday at Mohali also saw GRPs jumping from 17.7 to 26.6. The Sunday match also saw GRPs double from the previous week from17.6 to 35.5. GRPs are a cumulative sum of television rating points over a time period.

Mr Tarun Mehra, Business Head, Zee TV, said, “Cricket is like a religion in India and hence we were closely watching the GEC trend once the matches started. I am very happy to note that besides cricket, there is another habit that is hard to break and that’s daily soaps. Our growth is ample proof of the same.” One of the popular soaps through the week on Zee is Betiya.

Data from TAM revealed the growing daily GRPs for Zee TV as well. GRPs on Friday stood at 25 compared to 22 registered during the previous week. On Saturday also, the GRPs for the channel jumped from 14 to 17 indicating a marginal growth.

However, the other leading channel Star Plus did not display a similar trend. Star Plus dropped GRPs from 32.7 to 27.7 on Friday (the first day of IPL), from 29 to 24 on Saturday; and from 35.9 to 25.2 on Sunday, according to aMAP.

Data from TAM also showed a drop in growth rates from 34 to 27 GRPs on Friday between week 15 and week 16 and on Saturday there was a marginal drop from 28 to 23 on a week-to-week comparison.

However, Star is not unduly perturbed by the drop in its GRPs. Mr Prem Kamath, Vice-President, Marketing, Star India, said, “Given the hype there will be initial sampling. But beyond this phase of initial sampling we do not expect our shows to get affected at all.” In fact, Star which subscribes to TAM data believes the weekend ratings are not going to be an overall indicator of viewership trends.

Mr Amit Verma, CEO, aMAP, said, “While the weekend ratings clearly indicate that the other channels have been impacted, this will not be the sustained trend during the week.”

Sony Entertainment Television is also facing a similar situation with its general entertainment channel. But as long as television audiences remain within the network, falling GRPs is not going to be a cause of concern. (Its group channel Max is airing the IPL league matches) Ms Sneha Rajani, Senior Vice-President & Business Head, Max, said, “In all probability, the ratings for the Sony channel will be a little affected but as long as the network as a whole benefits and Max does well, there will not be a problem.”

At the same time media planners feel that more than the channels, the IPL would affect other genres such as movies and English entertainment. Mr Tarun Nigam, ED, Starcom MediaVest, said, “Our research has shown that while GEC channels may get affected by not more than 10 per cent, it is genres such as Hindi movies and English entertainment which is likely to have a deeper impact with viewership dropping to 15-20 per cent.”

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